Environmental Gore

...Earth First...

...Ozone depletion is likewise a case of scary, partly persuasive, and incomplete evidence...

...Soon after the 1988 debacle, Gore and his advisers apparently seized on the environment as the issue to set the senator apart from the Democratic pack...

...Gore is also ahead of his colleagues in offering "solutions...

...carbon diox- ide-choked oceans...

...Nuclear war is an apocalyptic subject, and so is global environmental destruction...

...Less than a week later, Gore was fea- tured in Time's "Planet of the Year" issue as "one of the most ardent environmentalists in Congress...

...When the local landscape does look good, little of the credit goes to Gore--although he's not above trying to claim it...

...When it comes to the only currently viable "alternative energy resource'- nuclear power--Gore invariably edges away from serious discussion...

...In this new Sushi South, at least seventy-two Japanese companies have invested $2.3 billion in Tennessee, creating 15,000 jobs, and Japan, Inc...

...The first notes of Gore's new song were sounded before the presidential election year had closed, in a December 26 article for the New Republic, an ear- ly and enthusiastic backer of his White Micah Morrison is The American Spec- tator's roving correspondent...

...Rather than charting the future of the Democratic party, he seems to be repeating its worst mistakes...

...With Moscow so green, can Berkeley and Boston be far behind...

...Some of its conclusions may startle you...

...The "fact that we face an ecological crisis without any precedent in historic times is no longer a matter of dispute wor- thy of recognition," Gore said...

...Whenever he mentions SEI, Gore hastens to add that he opposes SDI...

...The fault in both cases, Gore murkily not- ed, is not in the stars but in ourselves: "Even now, many fail to acknowledge that our victory was not only over Nazism but also over dark forces deep within us...

...The Democrats will argue that it has happened...

...The ideolog- ical implications extend way beyond the fringe of Democratic party politics and into the brave new world of green radicalism...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1990...

...Yet, contrary to the im- pression the Gore camp seeks to con- vey, environmentalism was a minor item in his 1988 campaign...

...Who gets the ticket...

...Mikhail Sergeyevich, like Albert, speaks of the "need for radically reassessing the rela- tionship between mankind and the planet," a need made manifest by "Chernobyl, acid-rain, ozone-layer depletion, the greenhouse effect, vanishing forests and freshwater short- ages...

...Gore's dismissal of valid doubts wasn't a credit to his statesmanship or his science, but it was politically opportune...

...The real question, Gore con- cluded, is "whether the world's polit- ical system can find a new equilibrium before the world's climate system loses its current one...

...Species extinction...

...Rainforest destruction...

...In its fold are myriad socialist, anarchist, New Left, and New Age elements, and they are sure to be unruly--a situation which, once again, the Republicans will gleefully take advantage of...

...We feel every driver should have a copy...

...Population explosion...

...Not by Albert...

...A Strategic Environment Initiative can...

...Hardly an environmental call-to-arms from young Albert...

...With Gore saying the sky is going to fall in year after year, the Republicans are bound to raise the question: How come it hasn't happened...

...Mankind has engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture for millen- nia without disaster striking, and with a healthy amount of reforestation often following in the wake of permanent set- tlement...

...Gore echoes the radical environmen- tal argument, which lays the blame for an allegedly enormous ecological devastation at the feet of industry and technology, more precisely at the feet of industrial capitalism itself...

...If the liberal edge remains by 1992...

...His radical green- ing had begun in earnest...

...We must also learn once again to see ourselves as a part of...

...America, ever the capitalist offender, now commits its imperial crimes pri- marily on the environmental front, not the Cold War one...

...It's a sucker's bet...

...An "imminent and grave danger...

...Nashville I n the two years since his run for the White House crashed and burned in the New York primaries, Tennessee's Albert Gore, Jr...

...A typical Gore summary--without nuance or light--appeared in a Washington Post article: "The world's forests are being destroyed...

...Albert Gore seems to be betting that an environmental crisis atmosphere can be generated and sustained, and that environmentalism can run against, or around, economic growth and win...

...has emerged as the greenest of the Democratic presidential hopefuls for 1992...

...The en-vironmental movement was gathering steam, and Gore was determined to stay at the head of it...

...occasionally puts Gore in tricky political waters...

...to seize new opportunities for arms control;.., to protect our environment...

...Finally, there is the current shrillness of the "debate...

...Is a small increase in the amount of ultraviolet rays really dangerous...

...Gore bangs out the dark refrains of his eco-apocalypse whenever he has a na- tional audience...

...If they're wrong just 1% of the time, that's 100,000 undeserved tickets each year...

...Our engineers have prepared a full report on traffic radar...

...The "notion of mutual security," he wrote, "must now move from an exclusive concern with security as an issue of peace and war to a definition of security that in- cludes the global environment...

...Peter Kostmayer of Pennsylvania, and Wayne Owens of Utah...

...In short, we must regain our eco-librium...

...His political ambitions seem to have ab- sconded with his basic decency...

...every day...

...He is working on a book about the Yellow- stone fires and environmental politics for Harper & Row...

...Humankind has suddenly entered into a brand-new rela- tionship with our planet," he wrote in a fulmination entitled "An Ecological THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1990 Kristallnacht: Listen...

...We really ought to be looking at the most economic way to [reduce acid-rain G ore's stumping has nothing to do with the local game (he is virtual- ly unopposed for re-election this year) and everything to do with the national one...

...Disturbingly, in the same article, Gore makes what almost sounds like a call for planetary Lebens-raum--a"In the last 40 years, world population has doubled.., in the next 40 years it could double again...

...As Gore noted in the New Republic last year, this globalism "will be an enlightened, informed extension of our desire to survive," based not on "an unlimited struggle for supremacy" but on "cooperation" and "mutual con-sent...

...At Cincinnati Microwave, we make Escort, Passport, and the remarkable new minia- turized Solo radar detectors...

...It took 10,000 human lifetimes for the population to reach 2 billion...

...Gore's descent into apocalyptic demagoguery hit a new low last year on the op-ed pages of the New York Times, when he compared the planet's ecological condition to the rise of Hitler in the 1930s...

...The truth is, the scientific jury is still out on whether the global atmosphere is warming up, and confused about whether this would be good or bad...

...H olocaust metaphors are the dark side of Gore...

...military posts...

...Happy Poppy will be posed against the gloom-and-doom Democrats...

...While few Americans would disagree with the proposition that steps should be taken to address ecological deteri- oration, is it a "crisis...

...FOR YOUR FREE COPY OF THIS COMPLETE REPORT MAIL COUPON OR CALL TOLL FREE 1-800-543-1608 Cincinnati Microwave Department 637880 One Microwave Plaza Cincinnati, Ohio 45249 Send my free copy of your private Traffic Rada r Report Name AOdress City State, Zip THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1990 Gore proposes a "Strategic Environment Initiative" (SEI), not to be confused with SDI...

...Do we now shrink from the unimag- inably difficult response demanded by the global environmental crisis, and hope against hope that it will yet prove unnecessary...

...Then there is the Allegheny Mountains (1805), Francois Micheaux observed that "the spacious meadows in Kentucky and Tennessee owe their birth to some great con-flagration that has consumed the forests, and they are kept up as meadows by the custom that is still practiced of annually setting them on fire...

...M any of the details of SEI remain vague, although, based on S.201, the World Environment Policy Act in- troduced by Gore last year, it would in- dude: a ban on CFCs and other ozone- depletors within five years, massive reforestation programs, large-scale recycling programs, mandated fuel-efficiency targets to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and major funding for development of alternative energy resources...

...The recent surge of the environmental movement appears certain to increase the Demo- crats' lust for its votes, and once again the candidates will run to the left to win the nomination, only to find them- selves unable to move to the center to win the election...

...In this scenario, if we are living in an eco-logical Kristallnacht, then Hitler is represented not so much by the "dark forces" within us but by earth-consuming industrial capitalism--that is, by Big Business, or, say, by the Republicans...

...To confuse matters further, there is, as Gregg Easterbrook recently noted in the New Republic, "the incredibly annoying possibility that acid-rain prevents global warming"--sulfur dioxide might increase the reflectivity of the cloud layer, sending solar heat back into space...

...It's a guess--sometimes the wrong guess...

...House bid...

...It's difficult to tell whether these remarks demonstrate merely immense insensitivity, or sheer stupidity, or something a bit craftier...

...Of course, that's not the only indication that the senator is merely playing hardball with the environment...

...He'll be able to say he's both pragmatic (putting millions into greenhouse studies but deferring economically debilitating measures) and progressive (a new Clean Air Act, acid-rain reduc- tion, CFC reduction, reclamation of "dead" lakes, elevation of the En-vironmental Protection Agency to Cabinet level...

...Down in Nashville, all is sweetness and light, and Gore hasn't sounded the alarm bells quite so stridently...

...It must also involve a new con- cept of national security...

...But even as a critic of [SDI], I recognize it drew together facilities and resources which had been scattered and succeeded in attracting a generous share of the government's budget for research and development...

...Gore thinks the ecological fate of the earth is the key issue of the 1990s, but his bid to become the "environmental candidate" has led him on a leftward journey through a lurid and occasionally vulgar rhetorical landscape...

...E vocations of "crisis" and "catas- ,trophe" were not enough, and Gore soon turned up the rhetorical vol- ume...

...its worst mistakes...

...Call or write for your free report today...

...He is way out in front of the other Beltway progressives on name-recognition, the most noteworthy of whom include Senators Tim Wirth of Colorado, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, and Harry Reid of Nevada...

...In his basic stump speech, the environment is men- tioned only once, in the penultimate paragraph, amid a laundry list of pledges...

...and, in the House, Bruce Vento of Minnesota, Rather than charting the future of the Democratic party, Gore seems to be repeating be in touch with nature...

...the vast, interconnecting ecological system that sustains us and regain our sense of place in the natural world," Gore wrote in the April 1990 issue of Scientific American...

...and the Deep Ecology movement...

...The evidence is not convincing...

...Ozone depletion...

...He is similarly cautious about acid-rain legislation, which many utilities oppose on the grounds that rates would rise dra-matically if the industry were forced to install the scrubbing devices necessary to reduce acid-rain levels...

...levels], giving utilities some flexibility in reducing emissions...

...Fifty years later, "clouds of a different sort signal an environmental holocaust without precedent...

...In 1988, at the height of the uproar over Toshiba's sale of high-tech equipment to the Soviets, Gore protected 200 jobs at a Tennessee microwave oven plant, a Toshiba subsidiary, by winning an ex- emption from the ban on sales of the company's products at U.S...

...In Moscow earlier this year he "delivered a message of environmental awareness [that] demonstrated an understanding and sensitivity rarely seen among world leaders...

...Gore also routinely includes in this litany the death by starvation or malnutrition of "40,000 babies...

...Rural Tennessee today is a rich quilt of pasture and forestland, and while the ecological characteristics of the rainforests differ from those of Gore country, the main impetus in Brazilian expansion is not all that much different from that of the early Tennesseans...

...8 / AUGUST 1990 0Og0OIQQOm~00Q00a00D00QDIgQ000QQ0Q0gDDQ60Q00Q00QQgQ00moO00IDg000eQI0o0QDO00Q0O0gB0i0000D00Qm00006D Micah Morrison ENVIRONMENTAL GORE Having failed to distinguish himself from his fellow dwarves in the 1988 primaries, Sen...

...Organizationally, the new green popularity Gore seeks to tap is represented by outfits such as Green- peace and the Rainforest Action Net- work, whose officials do little to hide their larger agenda of overturning the real culprit in environmental carnage, industrial capitalism--that's the under- side of all the benign chatter about "globalism" and "economic sustain- ability" (Greenspeak for stopping eco- nomic growth...

...Gore has not made his mark on local concerns, though he gets an "A" for effort...

...school of thought that ventures that global warming may be a good thing, stimulating crop growth and forestation in the northern latitudes...

...It's just off the press, written in plain English...

...He's fine on the fancy foot- work on the global items, in other words, but the Tennessee environment is not in great shape...

...Now in the course of one lifetime, yours and mine, it is rocketing from 2 billion to 10 bil- lion...

...Are we simply in the middle of a solar cycle of ozone depletion...

...For example, the furor over whether Cham- pion International of Canton, N.C., is polluting the Pigeon River--an issue that has tempers soaring on both sides--is clearly not at the top of Gore's agenda...

...Gore is one of the few Washington politicians identified as "progressive" on environmental issues by the radical camp...

...The enlightened, Jeffersonian globalist will The Wrong Driver Is About to Get a Ticket (really, it isn't the policeman's fault) Radar displays a speed, but doesn't say which car it is clocking...

...It is the single most serious manifestation of a larger problem: the collision course between industrial civilization and the ecological system that supports life as we know it...

...An alarm must be sounded "loudly and clearly--of imminent and grave danger...

...The environments3 movement will be of no help...

...Similarly, the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion should be approached cautiously...

...Global climate change occurs over decades, and, while our monitoring equipment has tremendously increased in sophistication, we just haven't been at it long enough to establish a useful scientific record...

...and a change in the "very pattern of the world weather system...

...The "Green Revolu- tion" now embraces not only such picaresque characters as the let's-legalize-reefer crowd ("Hemp for Ecology"), but also dangerous nutcases such as Earth First...

...1" t will be hard for Gore to ride the II environmental "crisis" into the White House in 1992 or 1996...

...Gore frequently moans that the earth's forests are being bulldozed and burned down "at the rate of one football field's worth every second, one Tennessee's worth every year," as if this were some heinous new development...

...Living species are dying at an unprecedented rate...

...First, there needs to be a "new globalism...

...Mostly, thee're concerned about the economy and jobs, the fundamental pivot, bar- ring war, on which elections turn...

...This is not to suggest Gore endorses these ideas, but in 1992 he and other Democrats might find them- selves in the Dance of Political Death with the environmentalists, seeking to avoid the far left's toxic embrace while retaining the liberal edge on the issue...

...an enormous hole is open- ing in the ozone layer...

...to make con- tinued progress on civil rights...

...The "new globalism" is woven from Gorbachevian cloth and the greening of left radicalism...

...We are now facing "the horren- dous prospect of an ecological col- lapse," Gore told a National Academy of Sciences forum on global climate change a few months later...

...It doesn't have a chance of passing Congress, but it will make wonderful campaign literature...

...Gore, though not mentioned in the article, was quick to fire off a letter to the Time affiliate praising both Chattanooga's "environ- mentally conscious citizens" and the sports magazine's "outstanding cover- age of the environment...

...Let's face it," he noted in Washington's Roll Call newspaper, "the Strategic Defense Initiative can't assure our survival into the 21st century...

...How thought- ful and measured...

...He just tends to business, frequently visiting, battling in the Senate on popular local issues such as cable TV re-regulation, and protecting jobs...

...Much of the world closed its eyes as Hitler marched be- cause the only adequate response was a horrible war many hoped to avoid...

...Do volcanoes and the oceans naturally emit more chlorine, the destructive element in CFCs, than manmade products...

...Sports Illustrated recently ran a story about Chattanooga's suc-cessful city-wide effort to clean up its industry-fouled air...

...Not only has the corporate world jumped on the ecological bandwagon, but George H. W. Bush will be mak- ing a mighty effort to remind voters that he is the environmental President...

...Too bad we don't get to read it in the New York Times and the Washington Post...

...Why, once again," he writes, "do we fail to rally our forces...

...This is true even of Gore's Ten- nessee: In Travels to the West of the If we are living in an ecological Kristallnacht, then Hitler is represented by earth-consuming industrial capitalism that is, by Big Business, or, say, by the Republicans...

...Nature puts about twenty-five times more carbon dioxide in the air than man, and some scien- tists think nature may just absorb our industrial excretions...

...It's an idea that could ap- peal only to an extremist...

...Unless we quickly and profoundly change the course of our civilization," he pro-claimed, "we face an immediate and grave danger of destroying the world- wide ecological system that sustains life as we know it...

...An-tarctica, he noted, is the "frontier of the global ecological crisis," adding that awaiting us are three potential catastrophes: rising seas...

...In a short piece about his recent trip to Antarctica--Gore would soon be jetting off to Brazil and Moscow in search of ecological enlight- enment-we see Albert in "the coldest place on earth.., hunt[ing] for infor- mation about global warming...

...America already con- sumes a disproportionate percentage of the world's energy resources...

...If you want one, it's yours free...

...His op- portunism is bound to draw him into deep trouble, as he will have to shift more and more to the left to satisfy the demands of the radicals in the nomi- nating wing of the party...

...AI Gore is hoping that radical green rhetoric will do the trick for him in 1992...

...But, down here in Ten-nessee, as elsewhere in the country, folks are not alarmed about the en- vironment...

...Nuke energy, if mentioned at all, is usually buried deep in a speech or article, and set off in some not-too-distant solar- powered future...

...to build the best educa- tion system in the entire world;.., to improve access to health care and com- bat the AIDS epidemic...

...Reporting on Gore's global warming campaign, Nashville's Tennes-sean noted the campaign's "universal appeal," but pointed out that the senator "is less fervent about some matters that strike closer to home...

...In fairness, Gore has shown a passing interest in environmental mat- ters since his arrival in Washington in 1976 as a member of the House of Rep- resentatives...

...advo- cates direct violent action against ecological offenders--a bomb in a car in Oakland apparently went off a little early recently, and injured two Firsters...

...Global climate change is real," he wrote in the New York Times on Earth Day...

...The Institute of Southern Studies in North Carolina, which recently re-leased a study "grading" the states and political leaders on environmental per- formance, ranked Tennessee poorly, with a score of 38.9 out of a possible 100...

...Some Deep Ecologists welcome epic Malthusian disasters and think things like AIDS might, well, not be such a bad thing, since they reduce the human population...

...And those who, for the purpose of main- taining balance in debate, take the con- trarian view that there is significant uncertainty about whether it's real are hurting our ability to respond...

...Gorbachev observed, "The ecological movement is now on the rise...

...Dead children...

...At home, or when addressing a home audience, Gore doesn't bother folks with visions of global doom...

...They're concerned, but they're more concerned about money and crime and education...

...There is scientific consensus that there is a big hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole and a smaller one over the North Pole, and that CFCs break down the ozone layer, which screens out ultraviolet rays...

...In 1939, with war clouds gathering, no one "could im- agine a Holocaust, even after shattered glass had filled the streets on Kristall- nacht...

...Why You Should Have This Report As a motorist, you should know how radar works...and why radar operators don't always guess fight...

...But again, the scientific territory is full of uncharted areas...

...Chemical wastes, in growing volumes, are seeping downward to poison groundwater while huge quantities of carbon dioxide, methane and chloro- fluorocarbons [CFCs] are trapping heat in the atmosphere and raising global temperatures...

...In a recent interview with Time, Gorbachev stressed "the conflict between consumer society and nature," noting that it would be a "catastrophe if all the countries of the world tried to achieve the standard of living of the U.S...

...No wonder...

...Suddenly, the A1 Gore who thunders in the New York Times about our scandalous stan- dard of living, "dependent on rapid consumption of the earth's resources," and calls for an abrupt about-face, is telling the Tennessean that "there has to be a balance between the scrubber technology and fuel substitution...

...Gor- by has been pretty good on globalist cooperation, says Gore...

...We are dealing here with increasingly credi- ble forecasts of climatic dislocations, vast changes in growing cycles, inunda- tions of coastal areas and the loss to the sea of vast territories--some of them very heavily developed and pop- ulated...